Underachieving Congress Appears in No Hurry to Change Things Now

Representatives Paul D. Ryan and Bill Shuster met Monday with other committee leaders in Speaker John A. Boehner’s office.Credit
Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The House straggled back to the Capitol on Monday night with just two weeks left before its likely entry into the Congressional record book for underachievement, still clinging to hopes that deals can be reached in the coming days on a budget and other once-routine bills that could ease some of the sting.

But even those accomplishments could be thwarted by a basic political calculation: Many Republicans believe they are getting such good traction from their attacks on President Obama’s stumbling health care law that they feel less compelled to produce results. Any public fight over legislative compromises could take away from the focus Republicans have kept on the health care law.

“I ran on a government that did less,” said Representative Reid Ribble, Republican of Wisconsin. “I felt the government was overreaching, and the citizens that sent me didn’t want me to be overaggressive in writing new laws. The Affordable Care Act launch is actually demonstrating the ineptitude of the federal government in handling these big programs.”

The 113th Congress has passed all of 55 laws so far this year, seven fewer at this point than the 112th Congress — the least productive Congress ever. House and Senate negotiators will meet on Wednesday to try to come to terms on a farm bill, but they remain far apart, especially on food-stamp cuts that the House is demanding. The leaders of the House and Senate budget committees will also meet this week, and they appear to be closing in on a modest deal that would set spending levels for the next two years while relieving some of the pain from the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration.

In the meantime, the House is set to pass legislation on Tuesday to mandate that loose change left at airport security checkpoints be given to airport “places of rest and recuperation” for members of the armed forces. The real action will be off the House floor — four different hearings in four different committees on the Affordable Care Act.

That contrast — between tamping down expectations for legislative accomplishments and raising hopes of more health care fireworks — has dominated Congress for more than a month.

“Republicans are using their political attacks on the Affordable Care Act as cover to do nothing else,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

It is not as if there is nothing to do. If agreement cannot be reached on a farm bill by the end of the month, an agricultural system in place for decades will suddenly cease. The price of milk is set to skyrocket. Lawmakers were given until Dec. 13 to reach a deal on spending and taxation. That would give the House and Senate Appropriations Committees enough time to pass spending legislation by Jan. 15 to avert another government shutdown.

Congress is flirting with failing to pass its annual Pentagon policy bill for the first time in 52 years. This time around, the bill was set to address major military concerns, from sexual assault to the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

And if Congress fails to act on what is commonly known as the “doc fix” before breaking for the year, reimbursements for medical care providers treating Medicare recipients will be cut sharply next year.

Even final agreement on a waterways-construction bill, which passed both houses of Congress overwhelmingly and has no money attached to it, appears to have slipped from reach this year.

“It speaks to the larger dysfunction in Washington right now,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania. “Washington is largely broken.”

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

At the same time, major bills passed by the Senate with bipartisan majorities to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, update farm programs, allow states to collect sales taxes from online retailers and protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from workplace discrimination have been blocked from votes in the House — where members of both parties say they could pass.

“At some point, the Republican leadership has to ask itself, ‘Why are they here?’ ” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, a negotiator on the farm bill. “These are things that really need to get done.”

For their part, House Republicans say they have passed 149 bills awaiting Senate action, including some with bipartisan appeal, including legislation to construct the Keystone XL oil pipeline, upgrade cybersecurity and tighten sanctions on Iran. On Tuesday, the House will pass legislation extending a ban on the manufacturing of guns that can evade metal detectors. Next week, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, will push legislation to move political convention funding to pediatric health research — a small part of a broader agenda to boost the Republican Party’s appeal to women and minority voters that has largely stalled.

The House is scheduled to be in Washington just two more weeks. The Senate will return from its Thanksgiving recess next week but is scheduled to stay for most of the month. But with only one overlapping week, time is short.

Lawmakers and aides from both parties say a modest budget deal is possible that would set spending levels for the next two years and alleviate some automatic cuts by shifting savings to other parts of the government while raising some fees, such as those paid by airlines to fund the Transportation Security Administration.

To get the deal, Democrats have shelved demands for broader tax increases to pay for infrastructure and early-childhood education programs, and Republicans have dropped their push to restructure major programs like Medicare.

“It’s not going to be anything earth-shattering,” said Mr. Ribble, a House Budget Committee member briefed on the talks, “but just operating under a budget so we can do our appropriations bills would be a quantum leap forward.”

The farm bill is a more difficult lift. House Republicans continue to press for $40 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, while Senate negotiators are sticking to their $4 billion in cuts.

At the same time, it is an issue Republican constituents care about. Representative Tim Griffin of Arkansas said he got an email on Monday from his neighbor across the street saying her father cares nothing about politics but wants to know the farm bill’s prospects.

But Democrats are digging in, putting Republican leaders between the demands of their Tea Party wing and the bipartisan clamor for a deal without deep cuts.

“If they want my vote, they ought to stop beating up on poor people,” Mr. McGovern said. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have a farm bill that doesn’t increase hunger in America.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 3, 2013, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Underachieving Congress Appears in No Hurry to Change Things Now. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe